I apologise for posting such a stupid request, but I’m very confused and wonderng if I’ve bought completely the wrong thing.

I know next to nothing about electronics but have just worked my way through the arduino starter kit. I have a particular project I’m working on, which requires 4 steppers with a degree of sensitivity.

I was advised to buy an A4988 stepper driver to make this easier, which I did, the black one. But I cannot for the life of me find any instructions how to wire it up, ie a noddy fritzing diagram even I can understand with a sketch. Is there such a thing anywhere?

On another note, from googling around, it seems that it’s a good idea to attach the little heatsink to A4988. The common way seems to be to then put it in the breadboard upside down, ie with the header pins pointing what would conventionally be ‘up’. Can I just doublecheck this is right?

One of the biggest things that frustrates me about forums and the internet is that a lot of good information is distributed. It takes a lot of time for each person to consolidate it as opposed to a knowledgeable person consolidating the information for everyone.
I felt like the A4983 and A4988 documentation is slightly lacking and I am trying to supplement it.
I am sure what I have created has issues and please point them out. I will fix them.
UPDATE - I have created a board to make the le…

I do not recommend you add a heat sink unless you know what you are doing, and, generally speaking, adding a small heat sink does not have a big effect on performance. Do you have any reason to think you need more current than the driver can supply without a heat sink?